Cultural distinctiveness in response bias

Abstract

As a conventional measure for assessing psychosocial factors at work, psychological distress and/or mental health/ill-health of workers, various self-administered questionnaires have been constructed and used. Majority of the questionnaires have originally been developed and standardized in the western countries. Ideally, standard or widely accepted measurements should be equivalent across race/ethnicity, cultures and regions, however this is not the case. A number of individual- and group-level factors can influence responses to questionnaires, other than the work-related characteristics being assessed. Among them, response bias seems to be one of the most robust barriers that make cross-cultural comparison difficult. This chapter focuses on the ethno-cultural distinctiveness in response bias at measuring psychosocial factors at work, introducing: (1) the importance of a cross-cultural approach in the era of globalization; (2) definition and types of response bias; (3) methods to detect the response bias; (4) a series of investigations of detecting a cultural-specific response bias and the way to reduce the response bias; and (5) suggestions for future directions.